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Government reform of the National Health Service: implications for radiologists and diagnostic services

Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA 02114, USA

Correspondence: Dr Giles Boland, Department of Radiology, White 270C, Massachusetts General Hospital, 55 Fruit Street, Boston, MA 02114, USA. E-mail: gboland{at}partners.org.

Demand for radiology services within the National Health Service (NHS) continues unabated and current NHS operations cannot keep up with demand. Therefore, to meet this demand, the government has decided to outsource a significant number of investigations to the independent sector and will actively promote patient referrals to the new government sponsored Treatment Centres as they become available. This presents opportunities to patients, but threatens existing public sector providers (including doctors) as competition for radiology services may result in both loss of patient referrals and revenue to these providers. This article is a personal opinion and will focus on the current challenges facing the provision of radiology services in the NHS. I will suggest the possible negative outcomes for providers (NHS hospitals and staff alike) and will offer strategies, tactics and tools that can be employed to counter the threat to their existing services.